Guns and Politics

Just before Memorial Weekend, President Obama signed, without comment, an amendment to the credit card reform act which will allow loaded, concealed weapons into National Parks.

Couple of things.  First, in reading the response to this amendment, particularly by the National Park Rangers, I am more than a little concerned that many if not most rangers believe many if not most visitors already carry weapons!  Yikes!  Is that how our rangers are being trained, to believe every single person visiting a National Park is armed and dangerous?  Last time I'll ever ask where the restroom is!

Second, let's just acknowledge right here and now that the National Rifle Association and the "gun lobby," has won the gun control debate.  It's over.  Despite people's paranoia that Obama is going to "take away guns," it ain't going to happen.  The buzzer has sounded, game over.

But, mark my words.  Every time a charismatic mega-fauna is shot (read grizzly, moose, bison, wolf) in a National Park, the National Park Ranger's Association will shout out loud that loaded and concealed weapons should not be allowed inside the boundaries of National Parks.  The debate is not over but the game is.

Forests and Obama

President Obama batted 1000 on his Supreme Court nominee.  But when it comes to our national forests, he may have been a little quick.  Homer Wilkes is a career bureaucrat with the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which happens to be part of the Department of Agriculture (where the US Forest Service also resides).  But to the chagrin of foresters, forest activists, and more than likely the employees of the US Forest Service, Wilkes was nominated to be the Undersecretary for natural resources and the environment.  

Certainly westerners, who believe the Forest Service belongs in their domain, are upset because the nominee is not a westerner, much less any experience in forests.  In fact, his role with the NRCS has been strictly focused on urban issues.

While President Obama seems enamored with the big environmental issues of the day, such as global climate change, he seems disinterested in land based controversies, as if he can simply throw a little attention toward oil and gas leases, forest issues, national park management conflicts, and they will go away simply by the force of his charm.  It's curious that when President Obama signed the credit card reform act he mentioned nothing about the rider allowing loaded guns into National Parks, which according to Park employees, could be a potential problem (although I am not sure it will be given we probably don't have a clue how many loaded guns already went into the parks anyway).

To turn the huge ship around on global climate change will not only require modifications on greenhouse gas emissions, but also a long and thoughtful look at how we manage our natural resources, particularly forests.  Appointments dealing with national forests and other resource based lands is not a throw-away.  

Government and Social Engineering

The City of Seattle has finally fessed up to what many city park users already knew: they are removing garbage cans.  In an attempt to, apparently, save money, the city is removing garbage cans from parks and asking users to "pack it out."

While this "pack it out" system works fairly well for backpackers in wilderness areas, urban picnickers with tubs of chicken, potato salad, and a case of Coca-Cola, along with baby strollers, toys, and other assorted "day in the park" items will have a hard time packing it all out.  Already, neighbors of Seattle Parks are reporting their garbage cans are being filled by park users.  

It seems to me that this is a perfect example of government trying to social engineer behavior in ways that might look good in discussions at the conference rooms but in reality is forgetful of the role of government and the relation with the governed.  

In the Pacific Northwest there is a push to have urban areas like Seattle and Portland increase their densities.  In the past ten years thousands of multi-family units have been built, pushing out single family dwellings and low scale buildings in favor of multi-use multiple story structures.  Both Portland and Seattle have gone from being small urban areas to New York wanna-bes.

The idea of increasing densities is good if it stops the expansion of growth into the lowland forested areas surrounding both Seattle and Portland.  Recent studies, however, are showing that sprawl continues to edge into these vital lands despite urban growth.  

Nonetheless, cities must make themselves attractive to multiple generations if they are to continue to house and employ large numbers of people.  Making amenities like parks difficult to visit, or "work," will not accomplish that goal.  Rather, it will encourage people to get in their cars and find places to picnic where they can conveniently get rid of their trash by throwing it into a garbage and recycling bin.

Sometimes great ideas have rather bad consequences and the social engineering of city staffs usually flop.  Often it is far far better to continue to provide good service and as a result people will enjoy living in the city.  Seems simple, huh.

Empathy on the Supreme Court

No matter who President Obama picked for his Supreme Court nominee, you knew they would be bright and well qualified to be one of the Supremes.  It certainly seems that Sonia Sotormayor fills the bill.  Obama clearly loved his time at Harvard Law and teaching at the University of Chicago Law School.  He loves the give and take.  The intellectual stamina it takes to wade through US Supreme Court opinions.  So here she is, Sonia Sotomayor.  Princeton, Yale, both public service and private practice experience.  Years as a District Court judge where her days are filled listening to criminal drug cases, civil lawsuits between disgruntled plaintiffs and lawyered-up defendants, and appeals from bankruptcy cases and magistrates rulings.  She saw it all as a District Court judge in New York City.

Prior to making his decision, President Obama apparently stated that he wanted a justice who had empathy.  The right-wing went nuts, equating empathy with being an activist judge, assuming that if a justice was empathetic they would always rule for the underdog.  But they mistook the definition of empathy.  To be empathetic is to listen to all sides, to try and understand someone else's point of view.  That however is not sympathetic.  And one can and should be empathetic without being sympathetic.  For instance, Judge Sotomayor may have been empathetic to a drug dealer's life story, trying to make a buck on the streets of South Bronx.  But you know, that doesn't mean she was sympathetic.  She may have chastised the dealer for bringing drugs to her childhood neighborhood, for not trying to find other, legal ways, to make a living.  

Being empathetic, however, is the most important quality for a Supreme Court Justice.  If there ever was a governmental position that is isolated and detached from the every day lives of Americans, it is being a Supreme.  They have clerks who come from the creme de la creme of law schools, who research and indeed, write most of the opinions.  They work with eight other people, also appointed for life, who apparently rarely interact except for their meetings to decide on a scant 80 or so cases to hear during a session that runs from October to June.  It's a cool job if you can get it!

So having someone on the court who may remember what it was like to be hungry, or whose neighbors might have been broke, or who had to work through high school...well, it adds a bit of American values to an American institution.  And in those 80 or so cases, maybe when some of the justices want to decide the case on a procedural ground, throwing out a convict's last appeal because he didn't know the filing date, maybe her voice will be the one to ask to look at the matter on substantive grounds.  That maybe that one person should have a second look at the merits of his case.  And if that is judicial activism, well, that's just fine.

We could have used empathy when the interned Japanese sought relief from their rounding up and imprisonment without cause during World War II.  We could have used empathy during Plusey v. Ferguson.  We could have used empathy in the recent Leadbetter case.  

Justice Sonia Sotomayor.  Princeton Phi Beta Kappa.  Yale Law Review Editor.  Smart, gutsy, moderate, empathetic.  It's a good day.

Banning Books About Agriculture

Michael Pollan and Alice Waters are the celebrated leaders of the locavore movement, that is, buying produce and meats grown and raised close to your home.  The idea is one of sustainability, the closer the food is to market, the less energy is used to produce it.  Also, local produce and meats mean, perhaps, more preservation of biodiversity because producers are not trying to "force" products in climates and regions they do not grow.  It's all great, in theory, or if you happen to live in the Berkeley Hills and are surrounded by some of the most productive farm land (thanks to irrigation, by the way) in the world.

Pollan's latest book, The Omnivore's Dilemma was chosen by the Washington State University faculty to be the "must read" for the incoming freshman class in 2009.  WSU (or as we call it Wazoo) has traditionally been Washington State's agriculture school.  One of the regents, a wheat farmer from Walla Walla, read the book and apparently mentioned his objections to the president of the university and sure enough, the book was pulled.  In Pollan's book he takes aim at large agri-businesses and how overly processed foods have led to an epidemic of obesity in America.

Wazoo apparently kowtowed to an ag-based regent as well as the industry that funds many of it's programs.  In a budget-crunch year, who can blame them?

Except, isn't academia supposed to be about ideas?

On the other hand, Pollan and his colleague, Alice Waters, owner of the expensive Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, can get quite hyperbolic about eating locally.  In fact, last year, Pollan and Waters seemed to revel in escalating food prices, believing in conventional economic theory that as prices escalated for processed food, at the point they equaled what people paid at local "Sunday Markets," people would chose locally grown food.  What they missed is that people were hurting and inflating food prices were, in reality, forcing many people to figure out what to jettison, medicines, food, electricity....In addition, Pollan and Waters very publicly advocated the Obamas for the firing of the first female Head Chef at the White House because she didn't pass their muster on plowing an organic garden or was not a so-called public face of the locavore movement.  It was a little cold-hearted.

Omnivore's Dilemma ought to be read by everyone, especially those students who intend on working in the agriculture industries.  However, the advocates of the buy local movement should also be open to understanding that not everyone will be able to buy locally much less want to.  That it will be extremely difficult to turn the clock back on the choices offered in our grocery stores.  But that little steps, the small ways each of us contribute to a more sustainable society, should be celebrated and each change leads to huge movements.

Commencement Address

It's the time for graduations...and here is an address by Paul Hawkin (founder of Smith & Hawkin) that I thought was particularly good:

Commencement Address to the Class of 2009, Un iversity of Portland, May 3rd,

2009

By Paul Hawken

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple

short talk that was "direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean,

shivering, startling, and graceful."  Boy, no pressure there.

 But let's begin with the startling part.  Hey, Class of 2009: you are going

to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time

when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is

accelerating.  Kind of a mind-boggling situation - but not one peer-reviewed

paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement.

Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers,

and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have

misplaced them.  Important rules like -- don't poison the water, soil, or

air, and don't let the earth get overcrowded, and don't touch the thermostat

-- have been broken.  Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so

ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying

through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for

seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food - but all that is

changing.

 There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and

in case you didn't bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it

says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.  The earth couldn't afford

to send any recruiters or limos to your school.  It sent you rain, sunsets,

ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you

are dating.  Take the hint. And here's the deal: Forget that this task of

planet-saving is not possible in the time required.  Don't be put off by

people who know what is not possible.  Do what needs to be done, and check

to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

 When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is

always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth

and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand data.  But if you meet the

people who are working to restore this earth a nd the lives of the poor, and

you aren't optimistic, you haven't got a pulse.  What I see everywhere in

the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and

incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and

beauty to this world.  The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been

destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with

no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world."  There could be no better

description.  Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and

the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages,

campuses, companies, refugee camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

 You join a multitude of caring people.  No one knows how many groups and

organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate

change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human

rights, and more.  This is the largest movement the world has ever seen.

Rather than control, it seeks connection.  Rather than dominance, it strives

to disperse concentrations of power.  Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the

s cenes and gets the job done.  Large as it is, no one knows the true size

of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of

people in the world.  Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up

of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers,

nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students,

incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors

without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the

United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say,

the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

 There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the

Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true.

Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it

resides in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild,

recover, re-imagine, and reconsider.  "One day you finally knew what you had

to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad

advice," is Mary Oliver's description of moving away from20the profane

toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening

news is usually about the death of strangers.  This kindness of strangers

has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century

roots.  Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global

movement to defend the rights of those they did not know.  Until that time,

no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of

this movement were largely unknown - Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson,

Josiah Wedgwood - and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that

time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each

other was what human beings had done for ages.  And the abolitionist

movement was greeted with incredulity.  Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the

abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and

activists.  They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England

into poverty.  But for the first time in history a group of people organized

themselves to help people they would never know, fr om whom they would never

receive direct or indirect benefit.  And today tens of millions of people do

this every day.  It is called the world of non-profits, civil society,

schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of

companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their

strategic goals.  The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in

history.

The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What do we

know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the

conditions that are conducive to life.  I can think of no better motto for a

future economy.  We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people

and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes.  We have failed

bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets.  Think

about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment.

Brilliant.  We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy

earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it.  You can print

money to bail out a bank but you can't print=2 0life to bail out a planet.

At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and

calling it gross domestic product.  We can just as easily have an economy

that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it.  We can either

create assets for the future or take the assets of the future.  One is

called restoration and the other exploitation.  And whenever we exploit the

earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering.  Working for the earth

is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

 The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and

its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams.  Literally you are

breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother

Teresa, and Bono.  We are vastly interconnected.  Our fates are inseparable.

We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells.  In each

of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells.

Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would

perish in hours.  Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conduct ing

millions of processes between trillions of atoms.  The total cellular

activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one

moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it.  In a millisecond, our body

has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe

- exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover

that each living creature was a "little universe, formed of a host of

self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the

stars of heaven."

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body?  Stop

for a moment.  Feel your body.  One septillion activities going on

simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it,

and wonder instead when this speech will end.  Second question: who is in

charge of your body?  Who is managing those molecules?  Hopefully not a

political party.  Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life

inside you, just as in all of nature.  What I want you to imagine is that

collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming

together20to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out

once every thousand years.  No one would sleep that night, of course.  The

world would become religious overnight.  We would be ecstatic, delirious,

made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night,

and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the

multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a

thousand years, not in ten thousand years.  Each of us is as complex and

beautiful as all the stars in the universe.  We have done great things and

we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation.  You are

graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever

bequested to any generation.  The generations before you failed.  They

didn't stay up all night.  They got distracted and lost sight of the fact

that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to

be on her side.  You couldn't ask for a better boss.  The most unrealistic

person in20the world is the cynic, not the dreamer.  Hopefulness only makes

sense when it doesn't make sense to be hopeful.  This is your century.  Take

it and run as if your life depends on it.   --

Paul Hawken is a renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental activist,

and author of many books, most recently Blessed Unrest: How the Largest

Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming.  He was

presented with an honorary doctorate of humane letters by University

president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., in May, when he delivered this

superb speech. Our thanks especially to Erica Linson for her help making

that moment possible.

Leveraged Real Estate, Leveraged Morals

In Big Sky country, a former timberman Tim Blixseth, started a luxury resort just south of Bozeman.  Yellowstone Club.  The idea was to have a private ski and golf resort where people whose "net worth" was over 1 million could hang out together behind gates.

As these things go, Blixseth got divorced from his wife, lenders it turns out, literally fell over themselves to loan money to Blixseth based on his ownership interest in the Club, the economy went south, and as testimony indicates in a bankruptcy court in Montana, the whole idea was over leveraged and essentially a ruse.

Ah, but for awhile the Blixseth's lived like millionaires, shuttling from their base in Palm Springs to France, the Caribbean, and of course, Montana in their private jets, yachts, and expensive cars.  

It seems to me one of the moral tales of this most recent boom is not to believe what you see.  Bernie Madoff, financial institutions profits, mega-mansions, Enron, all of it seemed to be based on either smoke and mirrors or lies.  And that ethic seeped into every corner of our culture: mega-church ministers deceiving their congregations, politicians assuring us there were weapons of mass destruction, manufacturers promising products which never worked...and we even deceived ourselves, thinking the real estate boom would never end, that our own homes could pay for cars, boats, tvs, granite counter tops, gorgeous appliances, college tuition.  

Now is the time to look at what was happening that made all of us go, well, er nuts.  As in "what were we thinking?"  Is greed really the dominant motivator in our culture?  Or can we find ways to restore some sense in our lives, where people don't feel the need to create private, exclusive clubs based on fake financial statements thinking that you need to live next door to someone who has an equally fake net worth?  Can we restore some sense of community to our world, where we don't think it's cool to be an investor who gets 30% returns at the expense of excluding our neighbors from the same investment (we won't even debate what Madoff's investors were thinking).  Or where employees of a company don't think it's right to jack up some elderly person's electrical rate because they can create fake power shortages?

The question really is how do we find our own moral compasses?  How do we reduce the leverage and become grounded?  

Tear 'Em Up

So the credit card industry, angry that Congress is even attempting to reign them in, just a tish, is reacting like a child.  The temper tantrum?  Going after every one who pays off their credit cards on time.  No more rewards, re-instituting annual fees, charging interest from the moment of purchase.

Tear 'em up.  The let them figure out how to make money.

Finger Pointing in Washington, DC, Oh My!

Instead of addressing the surge in foreclosures, the greed filled credit card industry, the exploding health care costs that are bankrupting Medicare and many personal finances, or even the mess in Afghanistan, our "for change" politicians seem to me indulging in their favorite activity in Washington, DC.  Finger pointing.

The targets this time are Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who for years, was the ranking minority leader on the House Intelligence Committee.  During the Bush Administration's in-house debates about the use of "enhanced interrogation methods," (read: torture) then Congresswoman Pelosi was briefed by CIA administrators on the capture and interrogations of several al Qaeda masterminds.  

The Republicans, eager to gain some toehold into the Democratic steamroller, leapt onto this information, claiming Speaker Pelosi is a hypocrite.  How can she call for prosecutions or a truth commission on the Bush Administration's use of torture when she knew about it herself.

Pelosi, aware of this problem, is now pointing fingers at the CIA, claiming the briefings were misleading.  Congress, she said yesterday, was misled.

And today, the Obama appointee to head the CIA, Leon Panetta, said there was no misleading by his agency.

Stop this madness!

Show me one Congressman, heck, one politician who isn't a hypocrite.  Anyone?

So, what really should be happening here is Speaker Pelosi should admit she was briefed, at the time the briefings were confidential, she expressed her concerns about the interrogation methods, and now it's time for us to find out what actually happened and move on.

But this game, this finger pointing.  What a waste of time.  While we're focused on this, thousands of people lost their homes to foreclosures.  Millions are out of work.  People are struggling trying to find health care.

How to Charge Interest on Credit

This weekend, in the New York Times Magazine an economic reporter for the newspaper writes about his own credit crisis.  The image of people who are in default of their mortgages or credit cards is not an economic reporter for the New York Times.  But, what this deeply personal narrative tells us is that this current credit crisis is 9 parts greed of financial institutions and 1 part not thinking in the case of most borrowers.

But as I read this story and listened to the ongoing policy debate about reigning in credit card companies I am struck with the idea of risk.  Traditionally, lenders charge more interest to borrowers who the lender deems to be a risk, that is, less likely to pay off their debt.  The worst credit score the higher the interest.  Which if you stop and think about this is counterintuitive.  The people with the least amount of resources (generalizing that people who have less money have lower credit scores) are asked to pay the most amount in interest, thus further diminishing their already scarce incomes.  

What if we turned that around?  As it turns out, many wealthy people are highly leveraged, in other words, they borrow a lot of money.  But because they have high incomes, they are able to manage that debt.  But what if we charged those who are able to pay a higher interest rate for credit and those who have little income, less interest?  So, what if someone who gets a credit card limit for $1000 only pays 9% interest and someone with a credit card limit of $100,000 pays 20%?  

It seems to me the proposals being bandied about are nibbling around the edges of how credit card companies make money.  Despite the threats that if they are further regulated credit to people with less than stellar credit ratings will not get credit, these companies make billions on issuing credit cards to people ravaged by the economy.  The proposed legislative side boards on the credit card companies will do nothing to fundamentally change the system.  We need to not only re-think "risk," but we also need to look at the whole idea of credit scores and credit rating systems.  The arbitrary and insurmountable institutional way that credit scores are determined (just ask me about a friend who was recently told he was dead) should be carefully examined and perhaps scrapped for some sort of method arising out of microlending, where communities hold the debtor accountable for paying back the obligations.

It just seems that the status quo hasn't been working for a lot longer than this recent debacle.

We're Saved!

Have you noticed the most recent news?  We're focused on some Miss Universe contestant.  Or the White House Correspondent's Dinner.  And eking out into the new media are stories that the economy is getting better.  We're Saved!

Some how we have gone from the worst recession since The Great Depression to "green shoots" are showing and the bottom has been hit, we're on the upswing.  I must have missed that turn.

I don't really think 10% unemployment is a sign of economic recovery, and trust me, in a few months, we'll be at 10%.  Actually, we're already at 10%, it's just we can only find 8.9% who are measurable because they are new enough on the unemployment rolls that they have not lost their eligibility.  

I don't think large trade deficits are a sign of economic recovery.

I don't think pretending we can rely on consumer spending as the basis of our economy is a sign of recovery.  

I don't think failing to aid distressed homeowners is a sign of economic recovery.

And I don't think failing to enact stringent legislation reigning in the financial industry is a sign of recovery.

Safety Nets

Remember a few years ago when President Bush proposed that Social Security essentially become privatized.  That each of us has our own investment account where Wall Street could sell us promises to keep us in our elder years comfortably if we just invested in their products?

Ah, now is the time to be grateful that idea died, at least for now.  It certainly is still being bandied about in the same discussions that policy makers have concerning the health of the Social Security system.  But at least for now, it seems hibernating.

And thank goodness.  At the very least, most of us lost 20% on the stock market.  At the worst perhaps half our savings.  I constantly hear people in their 50s talking about how they now realize they will not be able to retire.  Several days ago I received an accounting of a defined pension from a non-profit employer in my past.  Not only has the employer not been fully funding the pension obligations but the earnings in the pension have obviously declined.

Social Security is the safety net, now, for many of our elders who have lost significant savings.  Unlike the Great Depression we probably won't see many of our esteem citizens dying alone in the streets of starvation or lack of housing.

But, the promises that we made to ourselves, that corporate America made to it's workers, that if we worked hard, produced, we could retire, has vanished.  

As we begin to imagine our world post-Depression and the pundits rant about the high costs of Social Security, think about all the times in our lives that we have needed safety nets.  It will pay to make sure we maintain and enhance this system.  So far, it has been reliable and hasn't failed, unlike Wall Street, real estate, and the dot.com debacles.

Unemployment

Can't blame the Administration for emphasizing any good news.  Today's unemployment figures are the highest since 1983.  Many of the work force were not alive in 1983 (I was and well into the work force by that time). But the Obama Administration noted that the rate of increase, the rate, was slowing down from the previous months.  So although we have over 5 million people who seeking unemployment insurance, and probably just as many who are unemployed and ineligible for unemployment insurance and hence not counted, the rate of adding more people is apparently slowing down.

Or, or perhaps every one is just taking a breather from laying people off, waiting to see if there is any good news in the economic horizon.

What baffles me is how we can go from such dire economic news in March and April, to finding silver linings in early May?  Is the economy really beginning to turn around?

Stay tuned!

In the meantime, those 5 million people, or probably more accurately 10 million, our neighbors, friends, family members, they are scared, nervous, and feeling a little hopeless.  The 8.9% is not just a number, it's people.

And What is the Change?

Chris Hedges, a former New York Times journalist recently published a piece about the "branding" of President Obama, and how his presidency may be about maintaining the brand of "change" rather than actually bringing about change.

You can read the article by clicking here.

It certainly is true that this Administration has tapped into needs for a certain type of image, which apparently have been pent-up for 8 years.  Carefully staged and crafted photo-ops of this president, his wife, children, and the vice-president give us images of guys who love their wives and kids, a woman invested in organic foods, and adorable, well loved children.  There is even a picture of President Obama teasing Caroline Kennedy about the famous picture of her brother peeking through the president's desk.  We have Brand Obama, cool, hip, caring, or what are the new words...transparent and empathetic.

But the real meat is in what is being done.  And here is where Hedges takes aim.  Of course the relationships between politics and the financial institutions is an obvious place to hammer home that while the brand may change from Bush to Obama, the results which impact average Americans have not changed.

It's interesting that the current generations, Baby Boomers to the current crop of young people, have been subjected to sophisticated advertising campaigns for their life times.  You would think we could see through all this branding, demand quality and authenticity.  But we don't.

If we want change, I think, we need to begin by looking at ourselves and how we respond to the "branding" campaigns.  Including the most important one right now: Brand Obama.

The Loneliness of Political Expediency

Last week, Senator Arlen Spector, from Pennsylvania, changed from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party.  It doesn't take a lot of political sophistication to understand that Spector read the polling data telling him voters in Pennsylvania self identify either with a Republican far more conservative than him or with a Democrat, name unknown.  So, Spector, switched, probably thinking he could get elected if he was a moderate  Democrat rather than a moderate Republican.

Then, within the week, he failed to follow his new party's voting recommendations.  Among other things, he was against the modifications to the Bankruptcy Act, allowing for borrowers to seek court ordered modifications of their mortgages.  I am not sure if he said this, but some Senator who voted against the legislation apparently said: "a contract is a contract, a deal is a deal."  Okay, and since when has any politician followed through on their word much less a contract?  

So now the Democrats in the Senate "stripped" Spector of his seniority.  In other words, he has become a freshman Senator.  Ironically, the reason he switched was so he could be re-elected, to hold onto power.  Power.

Maybe, maybe, just once these ya-hoos should listen to their constituents.  If they are not re-elected for who they are, stop trying to bend and contort themselves into something they are not.  Rather, exit stage left, gracefully.

Brave Judges

With all the talk about possible Supreme Court appointments, there are several judges in South Carolina who just did a brave thing.  They signed an injunction against foreclosures.  Over 5,000 foreclosures in that state were suspended to give home owners a chance to apply for federal programs which may help them keep their homes, stay in their neighborhoods, allow their children to stay in their schools.  

So, US Senate, what, again are the reasons you didn't want to help homeowners by making simple changes in the bankruptcy laws which are, by the way, available to corporations and owners of second homes?  

Trying to Negotiate with a Bank

In today's New York Times, the editorial board wrote a great piece about the failure of the US Senate and the Obama Administration to pass legislation allowing federal bankruptcy judges from modifying first mortgages on single family residences, the so-called cram down provisions.  Banks and the financial industry lobbied long and hard to ensure these provisions were not passed.  These are the same banks who have received our taxpayer dollars.

And like every industry who dislike regulation, the same old line came out: cram down provisions will increase the costs of home loans (or land use regulation will eliminate affordable housing, or the Clean Air Act will increase the cost of automobiles...you get the drift).  The reality is not allowing federal bankruptcy judges (not a wild-eyed bunch, I can assure you) to modify a small number of home loans will increase the cost of mortgages because the toxic assets of bank ledgers is causing the cost of credit to increase.

But a much more significant point is that without the threat of bankruptcy and a possible "forced" loan modification, there is no, none, zip, leverage for a distressed home owner in negotiating with a bank.  Think about what is happening right now with GM and Chrysler, the threats of bankruptcy brought unions and creditors to the table.  

So, why is it Democrats and the Obama Administration allow for cram-downs with every one else but regular Americans?

There is Good News!

In a small stream on the east slope of the La Sal Mountains in Utah (near Moab), fisheries biologists and wildlife managers have found a small population of Greenback Cutthroat Trout.  Long considered extinct in Utah and parts of Colorado, this is certainly good news.

Nature is truly amazing.  While there still are disputes over the existence of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker in the southern United States (another long considered extinct charismatic megafauna), the idea of a breeding pair living in the swamps of Arkansas is almost magical.  Nature truly is resilient.

These days, this kind of news is wonderful.  To think there are fish enjoying a cool mountain stream high in the La Sals simply refreshes the soul.